Originating from 4chan means it occupies a little of both.
For example: 4chan intentionally trolled mainstream American media to make the 'ok' finger gesture be white supremacist, because it wasn't a symbol. But then the media reported it was a symbol AND white supremacists started using it. So the 'ok' symbol now being a white supremacist symbol is quite real.
Any amount of sewage in a soup makes the soup sewage. Only question is was the soup made with sewage or was the sewage added later. This meme being related to current events indicates the likelihood the creator is aware of the connotation as 'high.'
Lots of (understandable) generational anger towards Japan in China. I don't think Japan would fare that well in a new conflict. S Korea also may be held in check by the threat of North Korean artillery aimed at Seoul.
Idk if the wording of "peace in the Taiwan straight" accurately describes an "intervention in armed conflict with full military force" but I'm all for it if it means even the mere notion helps prevent further escalation in the region.
I think this needs an asterisk, pretty sure South Korea and the Philippines would be happy if Japan and China somehow simultaneously destroyed each other.
Edit: astrix to asterisk. Sorry, English isn't my first language. I mean it's been my primary for nearly 30 years, but it's still a bitch sometimes.
The average SK citizen doesn't really hate the Japanese, they just want their damn artifacts back. After all, it's difficult to say the largest instantaneous loss of life in human history wasn't punishment enough.
The average SK citizen doesn't really hate the Japanese, they just want their damn artifacts back.
I think you'd be surprised, we've been hating the Japanese since the 1600s.
After all, it's difficult to say the largest instantaneous loss of life in human history wasn't punishment enough.
Up to 30k Koreans being used as slave labour were killed in the atomic blast.... We don't typically see that as squaring everything away, especially considering the modern Japanese government is made up of the children of war criminals who continue denying their parents many crimes against humanity.
Philippines would not want to see Japan hurt. We are taught about the ugly history for most of our childhood but the general public is pro-Japan in the present. Pop culture aside, they funded projects and research without much debt traps and is curently much less evil than what China is doing these past decades.
That's understandable, i guess you guys wouldn't have the historic animosity. Plus, they probably aren't still attempting to do historic revisionism on your entire country's existence.
Yeah a lot of people might not be aware just how heinous Japans actions were in The Second Sino-Japanese War (the Chinese War of Resistance) in the lead-up to Asias involvement in WWII.
I think that's probably true - Japan has such a sanitized reputation now (which, frankly, isn't entirely deserved), and most people probably don't ever take a history class after high school, so a lot of people probably genuinely don't know how bad it was. I did a little over 3 years of an undergrad history major and never heard a word about it. The only reason I know anything about it is because my AP US History teacher in high school told a few of us about it after a class on WWII. I had nightmares about some of the pictures for a few nights. I see why they don't generally teach it to kids.
The funny thing about John Rabe is that he was probably the only Nazi in any sort of power after The Night of the Long Knives to think they were still a socialist party, because he was off chilling in China and everyone forgot about him.
The swastika predates Nazi Germany, but is forever tarnished by it. In Asia, the flag of Imperial Japan is often seen as a symbol of fascism, Imperialism, and war crimes.
More power to them for trying to reclaim it! It was stolen anyways.
The difference with Imperial Japan is that the flag is still being used by the same group that committed war crimes. The Rising Sun can't simply be reclaimed, unlike the Swastika.
Point being is that there's a reasonable reason for the Japanese Naval flag to be in a Japanese Naval meme. If you want at reason to think the meme wasn't made in good faith, I'd be more worried about how the Japanese guy is holding a machete to the other guy's throat. That actually does conjure up ideas about WWII war crimes.
Kinda. They do have fun stuff like a cruiser that has a flat deck and carries aircraft, not an aircraft carrier (!!!), a cruiser. And they have been rearming the last two years as it becomes clear their neighbors might need a stick, or at least the threat of one.
They have a navy but it operates as an arm of the US Military, more or less. There are 23 US Military Bases in Japan with 53,973 troops or about a third of the USA's deployed troops worldwide.
